"Glad to have you," was Barry's answer.
Chapter IV
A COUNCIL OF WAR
Tom lived in the district below West Fourteenth Street, where, to the bewildered explorer venturing for the first time into that region, the jumbled streets seem to have been laid out by an egg-beater.
It was almost six o'clock when, hungry and wrathful, he thrust his latch-key into the door of his four-room flat. The door opened into blackness. He gave an irritated groan and groped about for matches, in the search striking his hip sharply against the corner of the dining table. A match found and the gas lit, he sat down in the sitting-room to await his wife's coming. From the mantel a square, gilded clock, on which stood a knight in full armor, counted off the minutes with irritating deliberation. It struck six; no Maggie. Tom's impatience rapidly mounted, for he had promised to be at Barry's at quarter to eight. He was on the point of going to a restaurant for his dinner, when, at half-past six, he heard the fumble of a latch-key in the lock, and in came his wife, followed by their son, a boy of four, crying from weariness.
She was a rather large, well-formed, and well-featured young woman, and was showily dressed in the extreme styles of the cheap department stores. She was pretty, with the prettiness of cheap jewelry.
Tom rose as she carefully placed her packages on the table. "You really decided to come home, did you?"
"Oh, I know I'm late," she said crossly, breathing heavily. "But it wasn't my fault. I started early enough. But there was such a mob in the store you couldn't get anywhere. If you'd been squeezed and pushed and punched like I was in the stores and in the street cars, well, you wouldn't say a word."